Fifteen months, lyon love, and you are rocking this mama’s world. I wonder now what this relationship would be like with a girl, which I had thought I wanted because it was all I’d really considered. But now I can’t imagine it any other way. It’s funny, people told me when I was pregnant that I would feel this way about you, about having a boy—that I wouldn’t want a daughter at all, but I didn’t believe them. And now I am amazed that you, my son, are exactly what I want and need most. And because I’d never thought about having a son—I’d always envisioned that being a mother meant being a mother to a daughter, I’m now fascinated by this mother/son relationship and I don’t think it goes too far to say that I see the entire world differently now.

 I can’t exactly explain it, but I’ll try. I think in a reaction to being discriminated against (in a subtle, collective but not insignificant manner) by the dominant, male species, I’d reacted by otherizing them. I viewed myself as separate from men, and even perhaps looked down on the lumbering, bullish, caricature of the simple man who is so often, less thoughtful, less intuitive, less empathetic, less aware than woman. (Mind you, this is a latent and subtle bias I’d carried with me despite being fortunate enough to have strong, supportive healthy relationships with sincere and conscious men in my life.) But now that I see life through your eyes, now that I witness your raw and utter magnificent beauty unfolding before me, I am struck as if by lightening by the realization of what I have long believed to be true (but often forget), that we are truly all one. That this division of the sexes is meaningless, that this division of ourselves from each other is an illusion, that we are all a part of the whole that fits together in a perfect, if harsh, world of opposites. And you, baby, are the yin to my yang, the sun to my moon, the light to my dark, the salt to my sweet. You make me whole.

And I must admit, I so cherish the complementary nature of our dynamic as it is manifested in the physical world–as mother and child, mother and son, boy and girl, male and female. I never thought about how physical it would be to be in a relationship with a child. But it soothes the soul in the most tender and tactile way to be intertwined with a child that has come forth to this earth through you. Flesh that is of you as much as it is other than you. Flesh that is as comforting and pure to me as the idea of God. Flesh I adore more than anything I have coveted on this earth. Little chubby knees and squishy thighs and oh my god those fat square feet. Your dimpled cheek and curly hair and hazel eyes, your thin lined lips and your big mouthful of teeth. I would be happy kissing your chunky little chunk o’ change body for the rest of my life.

Yet, I know it won’t be long before you are way too cool for kisses from mommy, so I am getting them in while I can. Although, believe it or not, I am also holding back, I really am trying to be respectful of your space. So all those kisses—those only represent, say, one out of every 10 urges to eat you up. I am trying NOT to put the “mother” back in “smother. “ Really, I am. The physicality of the relationship is something I hadn’t anticipated. This new, non-sexual but entirely uninhibited physical closeness with another human being is certainly novel (or long, forgotten since I was a child with my own mommy). And I see that humans are tactile before we are verbal. I was struck early on in our relationship, say four months into it, that you were so communicative with your hands. You would sit in my lap and we would play hand-sies—your fist around my pinky, your palm pressed between my finger and my thumb, my fist around your pointer finger, later, recently—all five fingers between each others—and each transition made with surprisingly seamless fluidity. Thoughtless intuitiveness. It has long reminded me of the early physical communications of first loves, the knowing, intuitive and caring intertwining of the hands of lovers in a movie.

 And truthfully, this is not the only boyfriend association my mind has made. It’s just what I know. I have never known such physical closeness with a woman, only with a man, so this tactile tenderness is comfortable to me in this form. Of COURSE, it is not sexual. But it IS physical. And that physical closeness that every parent should come to experience with her child is so unique and awe inspiring and precious, regardless of the sex of the parent or the child. But I have to say, there is something unique that I wouldn’t have been able to predict about this being another form of a male/female relationship. It sort of rounds out and perfects that male/ female dynamic as it has manifested in my life and as it exists (the masculine and feminine) inside of me. So, on that note, and in honor of the upcoming day of the fathers: a little photo shout out to the amazing men in my life in chronological order: Dad, Brother, Husband, Son.

Dad:

Brother:

Husband:

Son: